fredag 15 april 2011

A Tempestuous Bouquet Of Tricks

The stroked 1947 crankcase for the TT Knuck is finally finished. A tricky mission for sure but Charley pulled it off with ease. So many small tricks done to it, like steel inserts at the frame mounts.

And threaded inserts in the generator mounting holes. The Wico magneto is bolted down at 26 degrees sharp, this chain drive construction proved to be a solid one since there is no difference in degrees what so ever between the front and rear sprockets.

Here's how the peekaboo cam cover turned out. There was such a brain melting amount of work that had to be done to make it look this simple. The cover is split at an angle to seal up properly and then machined from top to bottom with a 1 mm mill to make a vertical seat for the o-ring, a pretty complicated surgery since the cam cover is curved and not straight from top to bottom. It also required a serious part of welding to build up the connecting surface in the lid, and then both surfaces had to be milled again at the exact same angle.

Since one of the plugs in the case that fixates the cam cover ended up on the lid, Charley also had to machine the case for a new one to make sure there's still two plugs fixating the rear part of the cam cover. You can peep the newly installed plug at the very top of the cam cover - right between the lifter housings, and after the plug was installed the oil canal in the case had to be re-routed/re-drilled. Looks pretty handsome with a cam cover bolt pattern that's not interupted by any generator screw holes... Well, that's only some of the stuff that had to be done to make this thing come together, alot of work for sure but well worth it and after all I'll be able to re-set the ignition without unbolting the cam cover, and that alone feels like a victory of biblical proportions.